The “consulting account” file, attributed to the former Governor of the Banque du Liban, Riad Salameh, and lawyers Marwan Issa El-Khoury and Michel Tueni, has placed the Indictment Chamber in Beirut in a “legal predicament.” This predicament is due to the legal problems that have arisen in this file and the complications that have accompanied it, especially with regard to the aforementioned lawyers accused of involvement in the crimes attributed to Salameh, which are embezzlement of $44 million from the “consulting account,” illicit enrichment, forgery and use of forged documents.
Despite the passage of nine months since the issuance of the presumptive decision in the file, and three months since the new Indictment Chamber took over its duties (headed by Judge Kamal Nassar and with the membership of Judges Roland Chertouni and Marie Christine Eid), the indictment decision is still stalled. The reason for this is the legal violation committed by the former Attorney General of Finance, Ali Ibrahim, when he claimed in an additional request paper against lawyers Issa El-Khoury and Tueni without obtaining prior permission for prosecution from the Beirut Bar Association. The previous Indictment Chamber, headed by Judge Nassib Elia, considered that this required obtaining a new permission from the Bar Association, based on the fact that Article 79 of the Law Regulating the Legal Profession considered that the permission granted was limited to one act and did not extend to new acts that appeared or occurred during the investigation or trial procedures.
In the context of the developments in this file, the Bar Association refused to grant permission in the supplementary claim to prosecute the lawyers, which prompted the Public Prosecutor of Finance to appeal the Bar Association’s decision before the Court of Appeal looking into Bar Association cases, headed by Judge Rana Oueidat, which has not issued a decision on the matter so far.
As a result, the Indictment Chamber found itself facing an obstacle that must be overcome before issuing its indictment decision, by which it refers the accused to the Criminal Court to begin their trial. It is worth mentioning that the Chamber had previously released Salameh on bail of $14 million after reducing it from twenty million, and the previous Chamber replaced the arrest of Issa El-Khoury with a bail of two billion Lebanese pounds, while keeping Tueni in absentia after its decision, which was violated by its president, Judge Elia, by issuing two arrest warrants in absentia against the lawyers without them appearing before it, which constitutes a serious legal violation.
